Goodreads review: Soviet Bus Stops

A great example of a book that does exactly what you’d expect, Soviet Bus Stops is the outcome of years spent travelling through the former Soviet Union by Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig.

More than 30,000km later, we have this: a testament to the way design will break through strictures at every opportunity. There’s a wide range of design approaches on display here, and most of them are, I guarantee, more interesting than the last bus stop you spent time at. There’s elements of national dress, cleanly aesthetic curves, and tableaux. There’s simplicity and complexity, with utility the only clear link between them: these are places designed to be used by the public.

It would be easy to make claims about the increasing ruin of these largely concrete structures mirroring the system that birthed them, but the book doesn’t make them. Instead, it provides a travelogue only, showing the reader the differences found in now-nations by dint of the design something so ubiquitous we rarely pay attention to them.